Skill Matrix: Building a Flexible Team

What is a Skill Matrix? Skill Matrix is the part of the "People management process". It is a framework that visibly illustrates the ability and competence held by your employees.

It is a simple visual tool used in management to help control and monitor your employees' skills and their knowledge levels. It displays all tasks and skills required to work in the specific work area.

Its goal and purpose are to help to develop, improve and track the efficiency and level of your employee's individual skills as well as the whole team flexibility.

What is Skill Matrix Used for?

• To gain full recognition of employees current skills, strengths, and weaknesses
• To establish a clear understanding of all skills required for a specific work position
• To share information within the company
• To plan substitutes for holidays and sickness
• To keep employees motivated
• To develop broad flexibility of skills
• To increase the effectiveness of a work area and the Company

Benefits of Skill Matrix

A few of the many benefits that fall under those categories are following:

• Benefits to the Employee
• Benefits to the Company (mostly leaders)
• Benefits to the Customer

Benefits to the Employee

• Full awareness of what their role entails, their strengths and weaknesses; and guidance where they need to focus their training efforts
• Appreciation of Acknowledgement and Investment of the Leadership into their  personal growth
• Understanding of the value they bring to the organization leads to employees increased motivation, integrity, and ownership

​Benefits to the Company

• Understanding of skill strengths and weaknesses of their employees helps with a company's direction where to make changes and how to improve available skills
• Reduction  of recruitment costs by addressing skills shortages, availability of staff, finding talents within the company
• Improvement of customers experience and their loyalty by providing professional, knowledgeable, and friendly services and great quality product

Benefits to the Customer

The customer benefits from the increased levels of competency of your staff that leads to better quality of product, exceptional and faster customer service. It gains their ability to resolve any issues in a timely and professional manner which gives customers an experience of a very smooth transaction.

How to manage your Skill Matrix

A skill matrix for small teams can easily be created using a spreadsheet, however, if you are working in a larger company / multi-location environment, you might like to consider a software tool that will allow managing the entire workflow online.

Conclusion

Skill Matrix gives your Company a great tool for how to direct your employees to reach their full potential and help your business to do the same.

"The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change.” 
― Vineet Nayar

“Motivating employees to work at their full potential is the main premise of successful management.” 
― Eraldo Banovac

“We can never fall short when it comes to recruiting, hiring, maintaining, and growing our workforce. It is the employees who make our organization’s success a reality.”
​― Vern Dosch